On New Year’s Day, we went ice skating, which has become an annual New Year’s Day event for our family.   Unlike where I grew up in Canada, there isn’t an abundance of outdoor ice rinks in Southern California, so it’s a special day for us, sans mittens, scarves, and heavy socks. Over lunch and post-ice skating chocolate milk (in So Cal, instead of hot chocolate after ice skating, we drink chocolate milk!), I brought up the subject of new year’s resolutions. My 10 year old daughter insisted that they were called new year’s “revolutions.” After a good round of healthy debate about whether it was ‘resolution’ or ‘revolution,’ I found myself grasping for the definition of the word ‘revolution.’ The first idea that came to mind was to define the word in terms of the French Revolution, rather than the American Revolution. It’s probably because the notion of the poor French masses uprising in the streets of Paris against an extravagant and indulgent monarchy has always inspired me. (I have often wondered if Madame deFarge worked outside the home and if she knit only on the weekends.)

 

As I was explaining all about the storming of the Bastille it occurred to me that my daughter wasn’t necessarily wrong. We all know that new year’s resolutions are made in earnest, only to be broken a few weeks or, if you’re really good, a few months, later. A ‘resolution’ is something that you try hard at, but it doesn’t carry the same weight or require the same courage as a ‘revolution.’ So somewhere in the midst of explaining about the bourgeoisie and the monarchy, it occurred to me that a revolution was, indeed, in order. I announced to my family that if we’re going to make new year’s resolutions that have meaning and commitment, then something along the lines of the determination and passion of the French revolutionaries was necessary.  My husband and oldest daughter were intrigued, while my 4 year old began feeding her roll to the birds.  I stopped my history lesson midway through Marie Antoinette and proposed the new idea: Why not make our new year’s resolutions truly revolutionary? I don’t know about the rest of my family, but here are my New Year’s Revolutions for Working Mothers:

 

1.      Create patience and calm in the home, even on weeknights full of homework, trip slips, follow up work emails, and baths.

2.      Find time to do something for myself once every week.

3.      Nurture the bond between my husband and me, separate from our role as parents (which may be as simple as staying up past 9 pm to accompany my husband on the couch to watch the Discovery Channel.)

4.      Allow my husband the time and space to dress/discipline the children and or wash the dishes the best way he knows how, without intervention from me.

5.      Resist the temptation to yell when I’m not being heard.

 

I’m committed to starting a revolution at home this year but in the end, if I occasionally fall asleep in my daughter’s room at 8:30 pm or wonder aloud why my husband never fails to leave one or two items unwashed by the sink, it will not have escaped me that I have once again learned something valuable from my child. With all the wisdom of a 45 year old working mother with a doctorate, I continue to learn the most valuable life lessons from my children: Revolutions begin at home.